Kentucky ad links Obamacare, Grimes

President Barack Obama has been under fire for his pledge to let Americans keep their private health insurance plans — and now, so is Kentucky Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes.

The outside group Kentuckians for Strong Leadership is going on the air this week with an ad tying Grimes to the president’s controversial promise, POLITICO has learned. The super PAC, which was set up to support Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s reelection, will spend $340,000 to air the commercial on broadcast and cable television statewide.

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The spot begins with a clip of Obama vowing that under the Affordable Care Act, “If you like your private health insurance plan, you can keep your plan” — before citing an NBC News report suggesting the administration was aware all along that many Americans would have to transition to new insurance coverage.

The commercial includes footage of a burning house in the background; that’s the same image Grimes used in a recent ad attacking McConnell over the government shutdown, accusing the Republican of “light[ing] the house on fire and then [claiming] credit for putting it out.”

There’s only a casual linkage between the Obamacare message in the ad and the attack on Grimes’s personal credibility, but it’s no surprise that McConnell and his allies want to ensure the ACA’s problematic and highly public implementation phase in the foreground of the 2014 Senate race.

The KSL ad against Grimes represents yet another expensive salvo in a Kentucky air war that is unlikely to pause before Election Day next year. Over the last week, the Democratic group Patriot Majority spent more than a quarter-million dollars attacking McConnell on the air over the government shutdown, and the GOP Senate leader has also faced harsh negative advertising from the hard-right Senate Conservatives Fund.

A Grimes spokeswoman did not immediately return a request for comment.